What your saying is true BUT. Your are talking about keeping servers (plural ?) running but, for conservancy, you should not need a full fledge cloud. It not about keeping it running for millions of customers. It's about being able to run for research to study games in the long run. One server that can handle a couple or two clients should be enough for conservancy.
People are the harder problem. A game server is not a box you turn on and it just runs. The platforms themselves change under you all the time as do all the SaaS tools you rely on. Clients change all the time, too, and one missed update can make your game unrunnable. Folks don't want to train or pay the humans needed to keep server-based games alive.
